After securing purchase-leaseback deals with BellSouth Cellular Corp. and Powertel Inc., Crown Castle International Corp. capped off its first quarter with significant increases in revenues and cash flow.
Total revenues increased 366 percent to $55.1 million, compared with revenues of $11.8 million during last year’s first quarter. The company’s operations in the United Kingdom contributed about 78 percent of the total revenues.
Revenues from site rental and broadcast transmission increased from $5.1 million during the first quarter last year to $45.3 million this year, while revenues from network services and other activities were up slightly from $6.8 million last year to $9.8 million this year.
Cash flow from the company’s tower business increased to $24.7 million this year from $3.5 million last year.
During the first quarter, Crown Castle closed on its joint-venture transaction with Bell Atlantic Mobile and completed a restructuring of its domestic operations from a centralized organization into a regionalized organization. Crown incurred one-time restructuring charges of $1.8 million for severance payments for staff reductions and for office-space leases that had to be canceled.
The company opened regional offices in Phoenix, Houston, Louisville, Ky., Pittsburgh and San Juan, Puerto Rico, which will be responsible for all leasing, maintenance and project management in their clusters. Crown also opened offices in Boston, northern New Jersey, Philadelphia, Charlotte, N.C., and Washington, D.C., to support the Bell Atlantic joint venture.
In just less than six months, Crown Castle has become a dominating force in the tower industry. The company’s transaction with Bell Atlantic added 1,400 towers to its portfolio, while the transactions with BellSouth and Powertel, which have not yet closed, will add an additional 2,500 towers to Crown’s domestic portfolio. The company’s deal with One2One in the United Kingdom added 821 towers.
The company said it is receiving strong early interest from potential tenants on BellSouth’s and Powertel’s sites.
“Pro forma for all closed and pending transactions, we own, operate and manage over 6,000 wireless communications towers internationally,” said Ted Miller, chief executive officer of Crown Castle International.
“In the United States, we offer coverage in 26 of the top 50 markets, including 15 of the top 24 markets east of the Mississippi.
“Additionally, in the U.K., we offer near universal coverage in broadcast and significant coverage in wireless telephony,” continued Miller.
Crown indicated it hopes to use its relationships with domestic carriers to secure international deals with those carriers’ partners, saying Bell Atlantic and BellSouth together have a presence in 24 international markets.
Crown also said it is focusing on broadband wireless deployments, including third-generation wireless in Europe, expected to occur beginning at the end of next year and into 2001. The company noted at least one insurgent carrier will be licensed in the United Kingdom, which will have no existing infrastructure and might look to Crown’s inventory that covers the majority of the United Kingdom.
Crown also is focusing on wireless local loop deployments in the United States, in particular AT&T Wireless Services Inc.’s Project Angel, said the company.
The company also last month won a build-to-suit contract from Western Wireless Corp., under which it will build about 50 towers for Western Wireless in Texas.
